1. Field of the Invention
Methods for defrosting and heating, cooking and/or baking of a frozen convenience food, in a microwave oven, are described. Representative frozen foods described are fried chicken, French fried potatoes, sweet potatoes, meat and fruit pies, egg rolls, TV dinners, entrees, meats and vegetables, citrus fruits, pizza pies, baked-and-leavened food products. This invention concerns improvements in the reconstituting frozen convenience foods both in microwave-permeable and/or microwave-non-permeable containers.
2. Description of Prior Art
Prior art systems teach apparatus and methods for defrosting and reconstituting a multicourse frozen convenience meal in a microwave oven (for example, my U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,985,990 and 3,985,991). Many prior art microwave oven defrosting and heating procedures have required either (1) microwave auxiliary heating elements (for example my U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,777,099 and 3,881,027), (2) microwave oven auxiliary gas or electric heating elements, (3) the defrost-preheating of a food in a microwave oven and its subsequent finish baking-browning in a separate gas or electric range, and (4) apparatus which sequentially defrost and heat by aggregating gas and electric apparatus with microwave oven apparatus (for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,972,277). These prior art systems all leave something to be desired, for example: (a) using two separate heating elements or ovens waste time, energy and are inconvenient; (b) individual characteristics of a few apple pies (e.g. non-homogeneous filling or internal temperature) out of many apple pies may on exposure to microwave energy spot and selectively heat; and (c) pies with a full crust, when exposed to microwave energy in paper containers did not bake or brown and when exposed, in an aluminum container, the bottom crust did not brown (re. my U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,985,990 and 4,027,132).
Prior art teaches how to "brown" food in a microwave oven by sprinkling chemicals on the surface of a food before exposing said food to microwave energy. This expedient gave the appearance of a browned food but not the taste.
A trained cook must prepare a particular food properly and must be prepared to vary his or her results to suit the individual idiosyncrasies of the person for whom said food is prepared. One person may want his or her meat cooked rare while others desire medium or well done portions. To achieve the versatility in microwave cooking that is expected of gas and electric cooking, a microwave oven cook must be supplied with as many different type and size cooking apparatus and procedures as a trained cook now requires in gas and electric cooking. Some apparatus and cooking procedures required by a microwave cook have no counterpart in gas and electric cooking, for example, the present innovation and apparatus designed just for microwave ovens as the high-temperature, perforated plastic film overlaying a liquid-and-fat absorptive material (more fully described in my U.S. Pat. No. 4,103,431 and my copending application U.S. Ser. No. 129,360, filed 3/11/80). Prior art microwave cooking procedures include selectively placing a charge of water (a) within a special cooking enclosure, (b) on one portion of a multiportion TV dinner, and (c) inside a particular type food as a baked and leavened product (more fully described in my aforementioned patents and copending applications).
What I have now discovered is the general utility of purposely surface-defrosting-wetting the surface of frozen food with water to create a positive surface-to-core differential in microwave lossiness in said food and then exposing said surface-defrosted wetted food to microwave energy. Further, I have discovered that this innovation enhances (a) the operation, reliability and repeatability of the apparatus described in my aforementioned patents and copending applications, (b) frozen convenience food packaged in aluminum trays, and (c) frozen convenience food packaged in ovenable board paperboard trays.
3. Summary of the Invention
In a microwave oven, it is an object of this invention:
1. to provide a method which will minimize the random spot-and-selective-heating and edge-heating associated with reconstituting a frozen food in a microwave oven while providing a selective heating of the surface of said food in relation to the inner substance of said food associated with gas and electric cooking.
2. to defrost and bake and/or heat to serving temperature frozen-convenience-food prebaked-and-leavened goods (as bagels, dinner rolls, and pancakes) and frozen-convenience-food unbaked-and-unleavened goods (as frozen unbaked turnovers and dumplings, meat and fruit pies);
3. to improve the operation of apparatus described in my copending application, U.S. Ser. No. 129,360, filed 3/11/80, and in my U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,985,990, 3,985,991, and 3,777,099; and
4. to freeze foods at their harvest and/or to make fit again, for subsequent human consumption, certain foods accidentally or purposely frozen whole as whole citrus fruits and whole baking potatoes.